There are hundreds of different models of mobile devices on the market today, with surely more to come. Most modern devices, such as smart phones, are enabled to access Internet web pages. Despite the advances in mobile devices and the great variety amongst the mobile devices, web pages are still often generated in a one-size-fits-all configuration, and specifically for larger personal computers (PCs), such as desktops, laptops, and tablet PCs.
As a result, web pages very often display awkwardly on mobile devices and are cumbersome for the users to navigate. In addition, because web pages are generated for more powerful computing devices, the amount of data in the pages is usually too high for efficient rendering on mobile devices, which slows download, presentation, and webpage navigation. And with the high and increasing number of users accessing the Internet from mobile devices, the larger web pages can cause unwanted latency and bandwidth consumption in the wireless data network.
One approach for addressing the existing challenges is to create a separate web site for each device on the market. Each of these web sites, though, would need to be hosted on a different domain or sub-domain. Hosting individual web sites on separate domains for each mobile device is prohibitively costly in numerous ways. For example, hosts would need to communicate (e.g., advertise) the various different domains to each of the respective mobile devices. And the mobile device users need to learn, remember, or store in a web page server a device-specific domain (e.g., hyptothetical domain, http://www.iphone.att.com) that is different than the top-level domain web page (e.g., http://www.att.com) they visit via their PC. Also, device-specific domains lack the benefits of top level domains, including ease of use and branding. Further, hosting individual web sites on separate domains for each type of mobile device requires substantial duplication, storage, and maintenance of content. Still further, new web sites and domains will have to be created for each new type of device entering the market.
According to another approach, a variation of the first, a host would begin with a common web site hosted on a primary, top-level domain. The host would then forward the web page content to device-specific domains (e.g., http://www.iphone.att.com). This approach alleviates the need for hosts to advertise the numerous device-specific domains, and for mobile device users to remember the device-specific domain appropriate for them. This approach, though, still has drawbacks including the requirement for duplication of content and the overhead of maintaining multiple sites. Further, delay is introduced by the process of forwarding the web page.
According to yet another approach, fully formed web pages are converted for use by a requesting mobile device. This approach, though, requires hosting and caching of a complete version of the web site for each type of mobile device. Also, this approach requires additional server resources and delay in converting an entire page from the original form to the converted form. For example, new versions of content must be created each time a conversion is needed, to suit the requesting device. Another drawback to this approach is that the frequently changing dynamic content may not be cached and thus adding significant delays in displaying the page.
The requirements of the aforementioned approaches undesirably consume personal and computing resources and increase the ultimate cost of providing and receiving services. A robust solution without the aforementioned drawbacks is needed.